The power of social recognition in employee engagement – Interview with Ketti Salemme of TINYpulse

Today’s interview is with Ketti Salemme, Senior Communications Manager at TINYpulse, an employee engagement platform that combines pulse surveys, peer recognition, and performance reviews. Ketti joins me today to talk about employee engagement, surveys and creative work hacks that drive the development of a great culture and employee satisfaction.

They believe that anonymous surveys are the best way to go as it really protects employee interests and opinions so they don’t have to ‘play politics’ and it establishes trust amongst the team.

TINYpulse’s clients consistently achieve in the range of 75-90% response rates on their surveys.

This is helped by leaders consistently acting on the feedback.

Even if a company is deemed to have a great culture and is very open and transparent, they still benefit from asking for anonymous feedback from employees.

The majority of TINYpulse’s platform is anonymous.

However, the only element where anonymity is optional is a feature called ‘Cheers For Peers’, which is their most popular feature. This is where employees can send ‘cheers’ or kudos to clients, prospects, peers and co-workers to thank them for a job well-done or something like that. These ‘cheers’ can also be shared on channels like Slack or Twitter.

The reason that they decided to make anonymity optional on this particular element is that recognition is so much more meaningful if it is personalised.

In fact, some employees of some of their clients have been known to use their accumulated ‘cheers’ and have integrated them into their CV so that they can evidence the great feedback that they have received from their colleagues.

We need to remember sometimes what it means to be human.

TINYpulse are also fans of creative work hacks that improve culture and employee satisfaction.

For example, some they have seen their clients use and they also use include:

Chair races around the office as a fun way to break up the day,

Taking the team to the park for lunch,

Taking your team out bowling or to happy hour.

This little ‘hacks’ don’t need to be huge events but just little things that can go a long way to improve morale and build relationships within and across teams.

Their research shows that only 24% of employees feel connected to their peers, which is 11% lower than last year.

They found in their 2017 Employee Engagement report that the drivers of this drop in connection is due to a perceived drop in transparency and communication.

Whether this is true or not, it is important that managers and leaders pay attention to these insights particularly in a low unemployment labour market. Therefore, it is imperative that leaders and managers continue to pay attention to and invest in peer and team connectivity.

Communication needs to be both reflective and responsive.

To combat this at TINYpulse they have established a cultural committee that monitors their internal engagement results and will meet every 1-2 weeks to discuss and assess their results and make sure that they are on top of and respond to any communication, transparency or any other issue.

TINYpulse work with clients that have as few as 5 employees and their largest client has 150,000 employees.

Ketti believes that smaller organisations should pulse their employees more frequently (i.e every week) whilst monthly tends to be better for larger organisations.

However, the key is to keep the surveys simple, short and focused so that you can maximise response rates and actionable feedback.

It’s surprising that we ask customers for feedback and encourage them to name team members that stood out for them as we understand how motivating that can be for our people. Yet, we often forget to do the same thing internally.

Providing learning and growth opportunities, particularly for Millennials, is becoming an increasingly important part of employee engagement, happiness and satisfaction. These could range from things like a series of brown-bag lunches to the establishment of a conference fund to which employees can apply and, if successful, they will get sent to a new and relevant conference.

Wow service/experience for Ketti is when some truly listens to you and takes your feedback seriously.

Ketti Salemme is a Senior Communications Manager at TINYpulse, where she was employee #4. She has been interviewed by CNBC, Business Insider, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and many others major publications as an employee engagement expert.

Collect and act on NPS-powered customer feedback in real time to deliver amazing customer experiences at every brand touchpoint. By closing the customer feedback loop with NPS, you will grow revenue, retain more customers, and evolve your business in the process. Try it free.

Having traveling to 23 countries and lived in 3, she now resides in Seattle, where she loves to cook, run, and explore new bars/restaurants.

Register for the workshop before May 31st and get 6 online CX courses to round out your training package! Differentiate your organization with CX strategies and practices taught live with interim-CEO of CXPA, Diane Magers, and founder/CEO of CX University, Mohamed Latib. Join in Philadelphia or Long Beach next month.

Collect and act on NPS-powered customer feedback in real time to deliver amazing customer experiences at every brand touchpoint. By closing the customer feedback loop with NPS, you will grow revenue, retain more customers, and evolve your business in the process. Try it free.

The quality of a customer care strategy can make or break a company. Simply resolving a customer service issue or complaint is no longer enough, there is always room for improvement. Download this ebook to learn the 4 steps that address the major points you need to consider when building a customer care roadmap.

Integrating CSAT data with Salesforce takes the guesswork out of customer experience management. You can measure service quality across channels, understand the impact of each customer touchpoint, and develop processes to close the loop faster and more effectively. Read this guide to learn how.

Part practice handbook, part novel, part therapy, Customer what? is a practical guide to creating, and sustaining, the focus on customer experience to create value in the long term. The book is divided into four sections – each contains an overview of what needs doing; a set of practical activities

This important eBook covers eight components of an effective L2R Machine including branding, sales models, offers, content, technology and KPIs – all designed to generate more leads and revenue and build greater company value. You will learn how each of the eight components supports the overall L2R machine.

ABOUT US

CustomerThink is the world's largest online community dedicated to customer-centric business strategy.